If you have trouble getting your child to help with household chores, try asking them to imagine what it would have been like to be raised on a farm, let’s say during the late 1800s or early 1900s. With no modern plumbing system, how was water transported from the nearest creek? With no mechanized method to milk a cow, how was it done? Other questions abound! Michael and Martha Hanley purchased what is now known as Hanley Farm in 1857. As the family grew, the children helped with the chores…something to talk with your kids about as you ask them to help around the house!

Two of the Hanley’s six children, William “Bill” Hanley and his brother, Ed, born in 1861 and 1863 respectively, undoubtedly tended livestock on their father’s farm. As was true of all farming families, the Hanley children helped with the crops, milked the cows, and fed the chickens—all before they headed off for school! Taking the trash out or making a bed is all pretty simple when compared to feeding the livestock, milking cows or grinding wheat!

On May 20, from 11:00am-4:00pm, Hanley Farm invites you and your family to travel back in time at the Annual Children’s Heritage Fair. Children of all ages have the opportunity to experience what it might have been like to live life as their ancestors did: making flatbread, washing clothes in a tub, and making candles or butter, spinning and weaving, or wheat grinding. At the end of the work day, families would gather to listen to old-time music, and, if they weren’t too tired, they might have danced a reel or two.

Along with music, food, and activities, across the farm, you’ll find interactive heritage-themed demonstrations; including pottery on the wheel, faux cow milking, wheat grinding or weaving. And we’ll also have sack races!

Admission: $8/Adults; $5/SOHS Members & Children 6-13 years; FREE/Children 5 years and younger; House Tours: $3.

Windows in Time—Sponsored by Southern Oregon Historical Society & Jackson County Library Services, this free lunchtime series features well-known writers and historians. From noon-1:00pm on May 3, at the Medford Library & May 10, at the Ashland Library, George Kramer, Historic Preservationist and Historian, presents “The Show Started at the Sidewalk: The History of the Holly & Other Theaters.”